Heartbeat: Trust receives Heartworks and POCUS simulator worth £75,000
July 14, 2022
SWB have been gifted a Heartworks and POCUS (point of care ultrasound) simulator courtesy of Intelligent Ultrasound after a successful submission to Health Education England.
The submission was put together by both Sarb Clare, Deputy Medical Director and Acute Physician and Jilly Croasdale, Head of Radiopharmacy Department and Associate Director Healthcare Science and resulted in the Trust being gifted a Heartworks and POCUS simulator worth over £75,000.
The innovate and state of the art simulator will play a key role in educating and training up our clinicians who practice POCUS to echocardiographers who provide detailed scanning for our patients.
Sarb was delighted to hear the joint bid she had put together with Jilly was a success and said:
“I am so over the moon we were successful in our bid. It feels like Christmas has come early for us!
“This simulator will enable us to teach colleagues who are starting in their ultrasound training journey to those who are established to provide consolidation and enable assessments which are mandated for many of the national accreditation pathways.
“COVID-19 has halted training and education and we have a lot of ground to make up, but this equipment will provide us opportunity to teach during COVID surges and it even has a specific COVID module on lung and heart which is critical for clinicians to diagnose COVID-19 as well as recognise the sequelae of this virus.”
Jilly echoes these thoughts and said: “I am so pleased and excited as this will support the training of so many of our staff as this is such an invaluable piece of kit.”
Dr Zubair Rahim Cardiology and General Internal Medicine Trainee recently spent some time with the ultrasound simulator and is currently progressing with his Level 2 BSE (British Society Echocardiography) accreditation.
When asked about his initial thoughts on the equipment he said: “The simulator is very impressive and will allow me as a trainee to understand anatomy as you change the probe position. This is key for me to understand why I may be getting suboptimal images. This will be essential in my training and I am really looking forward to using this alongside my echo training with patients.”